“I’m glad he didn’t bother you. Don’t let him think you like him. He makes the most terrific game of people who let themselves in for it.”
“Lots of people do let themselves in for it too,” said Allie with meaning.
Barbara steered away from the dangers of that subject.
“I hope you’re going to enjoy yourself, Miss Thorstad. There are no end of things going on.”
“You mustn’t bother about me,” said Freda, “I’m afraid that I am going to be a burden.”
Barbara let a minute pass, a minute of insult.
“No—not at all.”
“Nonsense,” said Allie, “everybody’ll be crazy about you. You dance stunningly and the Bateses and Ted were nutty about you. You don’t have to worry.”
Freda said good night and left them. She went slowly up the staircase, thinking what fun it would be to climb that staircase every night, to go down it by natural right, to belong to it.
The sense of Barbara’s dislike pervaded everything else. She felt that she must have made a fool of herself with that young fellow. He must have thought her a dreadful idiot. Ah, well, the first evening was over and she’d had some experience. She had been at a dinner where there was an entrée, she had used a fish fork, she had danced at a roadhouse. She laughed at herself a little.